ApostateAbe

You may notice that the doctrine of religious evangelists living in violent authoritarian states follows a different tendency from the doctrine of religious evangelists in modern free democratic republics. The doctrine of religious evangelists in a modern free democratic republic is not necessarily designed to keep nails out of their joints. Paul strikes me as the sort of cult leader who was actually looking out for his own interests, not a fanatic who really believed what he was saying.

Steven Carr

Do you want to take that post back?

ApostateAbe

That's a good catch about Doherty's quotation of the NAB. It isn't quite the same as Doherty's translation, but the quote suits Doherty's interpretation, so he can claim that there is at least one other authoritative translation that backs his interpretation.

Here is the weird part: I can't find Doherty's quote in the actual NAB.

First, here is Doherty's version of the NAB passage:

". . . the gospel I proclaim when I preach Jesus Christ, the gospel which reveals the mystery hidden for many ages but now manifested through the writings of the prophets . . ."

Now, here is the New American Bible passage of Romans 16:25-26, with footnotes and footer.

25
¹¹ Now to him who can strengthen you, according to my gospel and the proclamation of Jesus Christ, according to the revelation of the mystery kept secret for long ages ¹²
26
but now manifested through the prophetic writings and, according to the command of the eternal God, made known to all nations to bring about the obedience of faith,

¹¹ [25-27] This doxology is assigned variously to the end of Romans 14; 15; 16 in the manuscript tradition. Some manuscripts omit it entirely. Whether written by Paul or not, it forms an admirable conclusion to the letter at this point.

¹² [25] Paul's gospel reveals the mystery kept secret for long ages: justification and salvation through faith, with all the implications for Jews and Gentiles that Paul has developed in the letter.

New American Bible Copyright © 1991, 1986, 1970 Confraternity of Christian Doctrine, Inc., Washington, DC. All rights reserved. Neither this work nor any part of it may be reproduced, distributed, performed or displayed in any medium, including electronic or digital, without permission in writing from the copyright owner.

The quote does not match, and the actual NAB contradicts Doherty like all the other translations. It is therefore tempting to accuse Doherty of deliberately misquoting the NAB for his own purpose, but to be fair it is more likely that Doherty simply has a different edition of the NAB than the one I found online. He simply quote-mined.

ApostateAbe

No, not at this point, but thanks for asking. Sometimes I say stuff that is really stupid.

Steven Carr

Fascinating!

Did Doherty mean the New Amplified Bible?

'Now to Him Who is able to strengthen you in the faith which is in accordance with my Gospel and the preaching of (concerning) Jesus Christ (the Messiah), according to the revelation (the unveiling) of the mystery of the plan of redemption which was kept in silence and secret for long ages,'

ApostateAbe

You would have to ask Doherty, but I doubt it. The New Amplified Bible seems to have the abbreviation, "AMP." The New American Bible uses the abbreviation, "NAB."

ETA: Actually, there is an Amplified Bible, but there doesn't seem to be a "New Amplified Bible," sorry.

EarlDoherty

My edition of "The New Testament of the New American Bible" is copyright 1970, printed in 1972. It stands as I have quoted it. I cannot speak for any changes which may have been subsequently made by the NAB people to that translation. (Perhaps they recognized and decided they did not like the implications it produced.)

I do not have time tonight, but Abe's analysis of the passage as entailing a possessive genitive does not hang together when the context of 25-27, and indeed the rest of Paul's writings, is considered. I will try to find time to address that later tomorrow. I'll also try to find time to weigh in on Robert Van Voorst and his pseudo-scholarship.

Earl Doherty

ApostateAbe

Great, thank you. I knew it was best to give you the benefit of the doubt.

EarlDoherty

When I quoted the NAB (at least my edition of it dated 1972), I said that this particular translation made it clear how the meaning behind the Romans 16:25-26 passage should be taken: the “of Jesus Christ” is an objective genitive, the subject of the proclamation, not the agent of it. That does not mean, as Abe seemed to want to imply, that no other translation agreed with me and the NAB. In fact, virtually every other translation theoretically does agree with it, namely in the fact of being ambiguous, so that it could encompass the meaning of an objective genitive. We don’t know the minds of the translators behind them. With the exception of the NAB (to my knowledge), no translation spells it out and eliminates the ambiguity. (Which makes Abe dead wrong in saying that “Everyone else’s translation of Romans 16:25 - Jesus Christ owns the proclamation.” They do not, they simply entail the ambiguity which could allow for it.) But that in itself is telling. Why, if any translator felt that the phrase “to kerygma Iesou Xristou” meant “the proclamation/preaching by Jesus Christ” did they not choose to make that clear, just as the NAB made it clear in the other direction? Maintaining the ambiguity indicates that there was no clear reason to go for the possessive meaning Abe would prefer—and which you can be sure all those mainstream translators would have preferred as well.

Furthermore, while several translations choose to use the English participle “preaching” which, while understandable as a noun, may serve to convey the idea of an action being performed (and perhaps indicates that ‘preference’ in the translator’s mind without really having to commit to it), the Greek in fact does not use a participle, but a noun, making “the proclamation” a better conveyor of what the Greek is saying, and eliminating the suggestion of an action by Jesus Christ which the English word contains.

I note that Abe initially took my “Bauer’s Lexicon” to be a reference to the 19th century Bruno Bauer, an indicator of the severe limits of his knowledge and familiarity with the literature in this field—which, if it does not give him pause, should certainly give us pause about taking seriously anything he presents. In any case, Walter Bauer was a linguist and lexicographer in addition to being a NT scholar in his own right, and in that former role, he and his fellow editors tended to reflect the going opinion of what words and phrases in the literature meant. If Bauer came out on the side of the Romans phrase in question as meaning an objective genitive, this is more than simply one support for my contention as to its meaning. It strongly indicates that the field of translation in general did so regard it as an objective genitive.

Abe thinks to compare the phrase using kerygma + genitive with the same in Matthew 12:41, “the preaching of Jonah”, and maintains that the latter indicates the meaning of the former. He says:

This, of course, is nonsense, and indicates that Abe does not have the ability to recognize logical fallacies, let alone avoid them. The very subject under discussion is the interpretation of a genitive phrase which can have an objective meaning or a possessive one. But he then chooses the example of a usage (Mt. 12:41) in which there can be no doubt that, while the wording per se is theoretically ambiguous, the meaning is unmistakeable in the context. He then uses that unambiguous application in Matthew to claim that this indicates that the Romans phrase must similarly be regarded as unambiguous, a clear case of begging the question. The only grievous error here is his own. (And one doesn’t need to be a credentialed authority in anything to be able to recognize logical fallacies.)

At least, however, he has indicated that the meaning of an ambiguous phrase can often be determined by its context. So now we can look at the context, immediate and broader, of the Romans passage. What is the more feasible option for understanding its meaning (perhaps even the only option)? I’ll use Abe’s preferred NRSV:

(Incidentally, this passage is generally considered to be an addendum added later by a post-Pauline writer. But we can treat it as reflecting Paul’s own views about his preaching and the sources of his gospel.)

Paul refers to “my gospel” and “the proclamation of Jesus Christ.” Are these two separate activities conducted by two separate individuals, Paul and Jesus, or is it essentially two references to the same thing, the latter, shall we say, fine-tuning the former? First of all, Paul nowhere—indeed, the entire body of epistles nowhere—ever states that early Christian prophets like Paul are following in Jesus’ footsteps, carrying on his work, etc. In a passage like Romans 10, the only way people have learned about the new message is through the preaching of apostles like himself; a preaching Jesus sounding his own voice is blatantly conspicuous by its absence.

The source of Paul’s gospel is scripture, something the epistles tell us over and over, revelation through the spirit. Nary a word is spent on telling us of a source in a human Jesus. The Romans 16 passage reiterates that principle: a mystery kept secret for long ages but now disclosed through the writings of the prophets. That mystery is variously described as Jesus himself (e.g., Col. 2:2) or some aspect of the benefits derived from the new knowledge about the Son and his saving acts which Paul and others are preaching (e.g., Eph. 3:5). Should we consider that Paul thought Jesus preached himself as a mystery concealed for long ages? Shall we regard Paul as saying that Jesus himself derived the message he preached from the writings of the prophets? This is how we would have to read Romans 16:25-6 if the genitive were possessive rather than objective. Rather, the preaching message, the gospel, is Paul’s, which he himself derived from the writings of the prophets; its subject matter is Jesus the Son, as he spells out in Romans 1:2. A source in scripture makes sense in regard to Paul's preaching; it makes no sense in regard to a Jesus preaching. (Yes, the Gospel Jesus can appeal to scripture, but not as his personal source of his own message.)

When we look further into Paul’s writings, we find that the “disclosure” is something that has taken place in his own time, due to his own efforts, not a generation or so in the past due to the efforts of Jesus. This pattern is universal throughout the epistles. It is not the acts of Jesus which enable salvation that have happened in the present time, but the revelation of those acts and the benefits accruing from them now that they have been revealed. And it is always God and the Spirit, through scripture, who do the revealing, not Jesus (as in Romans 3:24). As Paul says in Galatians 3:23-5, the present time is characterized as a “time of faith”, not the time of Jesus’ coming to earth and performing his acts of salvation.

Much more can be said about such things to be read in the early non-Gospel writings, provided one is willing to set aside established paradigms and investigate the mythicist case with an open mind. Regrettably, few of Abe’s sort are willing to do so. I don’t intend to spend hours here trying to convince them. Has Abe read The Jesus Puzzle, or my new Jesus: Neither God Nor Man? Has he read Robert Price’s The Incredible Shrinking Son of Man? Has he read any of the books of G. A. Wells, or perhaps older cases put forward by someone of the caliber of Pierre Couchoud? It would not appear so. Yet he comes here smugly convinced of his own infallibility when he knows and understands next to nothing of substance about the theory he scoffs at. (He apparently claims to have read my website, though he shows preciously little indication of it.) Instead, he naively appeals to HJ defenders like Robert Van Voorst, whose case against mythicism is nothing short of laughable. Someone’s term here of “junk scholarship” is almost too complimentary. I devote a fair bit of attention to Van Voorst in Jesus: Neither God Nor Man. There is an entire chapter devoted to “born of woman”, another to language like that of Romans 1:3, several pages to “the brother of the Lord,” the longest discussions you will find anywhere to Josephus, Tacitus, Pliny, Mara, our Siamese twins Thallus and Phlegon, lengthy demonstrations on how passages like 1 Cor. 15:35-49, or Hebrews 8:4, clearly demonstrate all lack of knowledge of an historical Jesus on the part of these writers. And on and on. Sadly, Abe will remain ignorant of all of it, since in his universe one doesn’t need to actually read mythicists to discredit them.

Earl Doherty

ApostateAbe

Earl Doherty, I really appreciate you engaging the argument. The secular scholars are not willing to engage their lay opponents, but you, a leader of mythicism, are willing to do exactly that, and it should very much be appreciated.

You win at least part of the argument. You have implicitly backed away from your previous position, and you implicitly made a concession. Before, you had a multiply-stated position of certainty of the interpretation of the phrase, "proclamation of Jesus Christ":

• "...it leaves no room in the picture for an historical Jesus."
• "...Jesus Christ is the object of the preaching, not the one doing it."
• "...there is no room for an historical Jesus."
• "In passages like this we detect no sense that Jesus had recently been on earth, revealing himself through his own preaching."
• "Yet Paul has left no room or role here for Jesus’ career; instead, he places the focus of revelation and the coming of salvation entirely upon apostles like himself."

There was no room in your interpretation for any ambiguity. But now, happily, your position is seemingly softened. You now think the phrase is at least somewhat ambiguous:

• "In fact, virtually every other translation theoretically does agree with it, namely in the fact of being ambiguous, so that it could encompass the meaning of an objective genitive."
• "The very subject under discussion is the interpretation of a genitive phrase which can have an objective meaning or a possessive one."
• "At least, however, he has indicated that the meaning of an ambiguous phrase can often be determined by its context. So now we can look at the context, immediate and broader, of the Romans passage. What is the more feasible option for understanding its meaning (perhaps even the only option)?"

I was hopeful that you would rest on the position that the phrase is ambiguous, and I would happily agree with you, because you have convinced me of its ambiguity. But, you haven't rested on that, because you think it can be resolved from the context in your favor. You say:

• Abe's interpretation would imply that there are two separate activities conducted by two separate individuals, but Paul never states that early Christian prophets like Paul are following in Jesus’ footsteps, carrying on his work, etc.

I say that, yes, Paul never claims to be the heir nor the successor of Jesus, and in fact that claim is not necessarily implied with either interpretation of Romans 16:25. Your interpretation, in fact, would imply that Paul claims the exclusive power to "strengthen you." It is inconsistent with Paul's otherwise-consistent language of humility. Instead of claiming to be the heir of Christ, he claims to be one of the "ambassadors for Christ" (2 Corinthians 20), "a bond-servant of Christ Jesus" (Romans 1:1), and an "apostle," at the time meaning a mere messenger. He even claims to be the "least of the apostles" (1 Corinthians 15:9). With my interpretation, he is dividing such an ability between his own ministry and Christ's. He added the phrase "...and the proclamation of Jesus Christ..." seemingly to not make himself seem so arrogant.

• A preaching Jesus sounding his own voice is blatantly conspicuous by its absence.

I say: yes, sort of. An explicitly preaching Jesus sounding his own voice is absent, except for 1 Corinthians 11:24-25. I know that you an alternative spiritual explanation, but it would be an explanation peculiar to you and be seemingly ad hoc, so maybe you had best not place so much emphasis on the assertion that you can't find Jesus sounding his own voice in the letters of Paul. There are other passages that can at least be comfortably (not conclusively) interpreted as evidence of Jesus sounding his own voice, such as 1 Corinthians 9:14, Romans 15:8, and 1 Corinthians 7:10. Again, I know you have a different (unusual) interpretation for those passages, but the point is that the silence is only deafening if your theory is accepted.

• Should we consider that Paul thought Jesus preached himself as a mystery concealed for long ages?

Not necessarily, and neither interpretation seems to imply that. It doesn't say specifically what Jesus preached, though it does seem to imply that the preaching of Jesus is revealed in the writing of the prophets.

• Shall we regard Paul as saying that Jesus himself derived the message he preached from the writings of the prophets? This is how we would have to read Romans 16:25-6 if the genitive were possessive rather than objective.

You seem to be reading much in Romans 16:25-26 and my respective interpretation. It does not imply that Jesus derived his message from the writings of the prophets. As far as I can tell, it merely implies that the messages of Jesus and Paul are reflected in the writings of the prophets.

• When we look further into Paul’s writings, we find that the “disclosure” is something that has taken place in his own time, due to his own efforts, not a generation or so in the past due to the efforts of Jesus...As Paul says in Galatians 3:23-25, the present time is characterized as a “time of faith”, not the time of Jesus’ coming to earth and performing his acts of salvation.

When you have strange interpretations for passages that are unlikely to be shared by other people, then you really should go out of your way to show the probability of your interpretation, not leave it to others to figure out your reasoning. Here is Galatians 3:23-25.

²³Now before faith came, we were imprisoned and guarded under the law until faith would be revealed. ²⁴Therefore the law was our disciplinarian until Christ came, so that we might be justified by faith. ²⁵But now that faith has come, we are no longer subject to a disciplinarian...

Now, your interpretation seems to be that the time of Jesus' coming is distinctly outside Paul's idea of the present time, like something changed between the time of Jesus and the time of Paul. And, I think, "Wait... the law was our disciplinarian until Christ came... then... now that the faith has come, we are no longer subject to a disciplinarian. Paul seems to make no distinction between the time 'Christ came' and 'now.' Exactly what is Mr. Doherty thinking when he reads this?"

Maybe, at this point, you no longer have the patience to keep on arguing, and I forgive you. You have already given me more time than I deserve. Thank you.